


ley lines

by fourhorsemen



Category: Free!
Genre: Character Study, Free! Dive to the Future, Light Angst, Long-Distance Friendship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26251117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourhorsemen/pseuds/fourhorsemen
Summary: A story about distance, because if you love someone, why let them go?
Relationships: Matsuoka Rin/Yamazaki Sousuke
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	ley lines

**Author's Note:**

> Free! Dive to the Future only gave us the barest hints of Sousuke and Rin, they deserved more screen time, so I’m rectifying it.

“Rin,” Sousuke says and Rin turns around, expression questioning, eyes meeting Sousuke’s beneath the lip of his black cap. He’s wearing his travel bag, and his suitcase is in hand, he’s half-turned, ready to turn away again, walk to Immigration and start his new life in Australia.

“ _I’m in love with you_ ,”  Sousuke wants to say.

For a moment, he imagines saying it, imagines in a perfect world, Rin’s ensuing smile, imagines the tears that’d well up in eyes as he’d throw his suitcase and cap aside, take Sousuke’s outstretched hand and kiss him.

“ _ I love you too. I want to stay _ _,_ ” the Rin in his imagination says.

That Rin would forget about the ticket that’s already bought, no cancellations, he’d forget about the bags he has packed, and he’d forget about Australia, his home away from home. That Rin would fall into Sousuke’s embrace and leave the airport hand-in-hand in with him and stay by his side, in Japan.

The fantasy is selfish, it’s not something Sousuke even wants, what he wants is for Rin to pursue his dream wholeheartedly but secretly... He wishes for once, Rin doesn’t do it full speed, wishes he’d slow down, just a touch, and leave a space beside him for Sousuke to catch up to. It’s a thought that is futile, another fantasy because Rin doesn’t do anything by halves. Rin is always swimming at full speed, leaving everybody behind to catch up in the trail of bubbles he leaves in his wake. Asking Rin to slow down, would be like asking Rin to stop breathing... so Sousuke doesn’t.

“Fly safe,” he says instead and Rin smiles.

“Thanks Sousuke, I’ll message you when I land, okay?” he says sweetly, considerately and then he turns and walks away.

Sousuke wonders if he’ll look back, and so he waits. He remembers standing at a bus station years ago, seeing Rin off, heart lodged in his throat, wanting to scream - “ _I was wrong, Rin! We’re not just rivals, we’re friends! Swim with me, stay with me, don’t leave!”_ \-  and waiting with bated breath for Rin to turn back at the last second and change his mind. 

Rin then, hadn’t turned back and that day Sousuke felt like he’d lost something he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back. It was a heartbreaking feeling, for a 13 year old, a feeling that made him cling desperately to the connections he still had with Rin - swimming, winning, seeing him at the global stage - with a toxic desperation that only served to pull him farther back, further away from Rin.

_ If you love someone, let them go _ .  


Sousuke never understood the saying, when he heard it the first time, it rang wrong in his ears, like a discordant melody. Even after he knew there was no hope for him to catch up with Rin, he’d refused to let him go, had chased him like a butterfly through a field all the way to Samezuka. It didn’t matter to him whether he’d catch the butterfly, it was the feeling of chasing on the coattails of something beautiful that had kept him going.

He waits for Rin to turn back, and his heart almost stops with the force of a tidal wave ofhope, when Rin, far away now, suddenly stops walking. Sousuke waits, hands clenching into trembling fists at his sides, eyes wide, unable to take a breath. It happens so fast that later Sousuke feels like it was just a dream, a hallucination, the remnant of a fantasy.

Rin turns back, he looks at Sousuke and from this far Sousuke can’t see his expression, hidden as it his behind his cap, but he knows what he hopes for it to be. That half-turn, those three seconds of movement, Rin stopping short from his dream for even a moment to look back at Sousuke, it’s enough for him. For the first time as he watches Rin turn back and walk away from him,Sousuke doesn’t feel bereft, he feels elated.

He’s not going to let Rin go, because he knows now, that Rin doesn’t want him to. 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave it to me to start busting out fic on the regular for a nearly-dead fandom.
> 
> Anyhoo, I’ll continue this if any interest.


End file.
